Anthony Hatzimoysis - The Philosophy of Sartre

This series provides accessible and stimulating introductions to the ideas of continental thinkers who have shaped the fundamentals of European philosophical thought. Powerful and radical, the ideas of these philosophers have often been contested, but they remain key to understanding current philosophical thinking as well as the current direction of disciplines such as political science, literary theory, social theory, art history, and cultural studies. Each book seeks to combine clarity with depth, introducing fresh insights and wider perspectives while also providing a comprehensive survey of each thinkers philosophical ideas.

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Catherine Mills

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Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanagh

The Philosophy of Foucault

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The Philosophy of Gadamer

Jean Grondin

The Philosophy of Habermas

Andrew Edgar

The Philosophy of Heidegger

Michael Watts

The Philosophy of Hegel

Allen Speight

The Philosophy of Husserl

Burt C. Hopkins

The Philosophy of Kierkegaard

George Pattison

The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty

Eric Matthews

The Philosophy of Nietzsche

Rex Welshon

The Philosophy of Sartre

Anthony Hatzimoysis

The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

Dale Jacquette

Anthony Hatzimoysis

First Published 2011 by Acumen

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Anthony Hatzimoysis, 2011

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ISBN: 978-1-84465-046-0 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-84465-047-7 (paperback)

DOI: 10.4324/9781315712123

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For Eva

BNBeing and NothingnessCDGCarnets de la drle de guerre: Septembre 1939Mars 1940ENLtre et le nant: Essai dontologie phnomnologiqueETEEsquisse dune thorie des motionsIHPIntentionality: A Fundamental Idea in Husserls PhenomenologyIonLImaginationIPPIThe Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the ImaginationIreLImaginaire: Psychologie phnomnologique de limaginationLTELa Transcendance de lEgoNNauseaOROeuvres RomanesqueSTESketch for a Theory of the EmotionsTEThe Transcendence of the Ego

Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the most famous philosophers of recent times; he is also one of the most difficult. His fame owes much to his political and emotional engagements, as well as to the wealth of ideas expressed in his novels, plays, journals and critical essays. The difficulties arise as soon as we ask about the reasons for endorsing those ideas. In order to achieve a proper understanding of his views, and the reasons that might support them, we need to look at that part of Sartres work where he explicitly addresses their content, presuppositions and implications; in other words, we need to explore his philosophy.

The philosophical writings of Sartre span fifty years. During that period, Sartre articulated, developed and elaborated, in sometimes unpredictable ways, a number of seminal arguments on major topics of philosophical enquiry. The desire for securing a reliable compass through the sea of Sartrean volumes, diaries and still unpublished manuscripts might make one adopt a sideways approach to Sartres philosophy. We might wish to introduce his philosophy by categorizing his work under fixed headings, such as existentialism, socialism or phenomenology. This is a justifiable way to proceed if we already know what those terms mean, and how they should apply to each Sartrean text that is taken to express those schools of thought. Another approach may introduce Sartres trajectory as filling the intellectual gap between, say, certain Austrian and German philosophers, on the one hand, and certain French or American philosophers, on the other. Such an approach might be correct in some respects, but it remains distinctively unhelpful for anyone with insufficient grasp of the work of the philosophers under consideration.

For the purposes of this book, I have taken the rather less travelled path of introducing Sartres thought by focusing just on specific parts of Sartres own work. Some references to other philosophers are of course inescapable especially for those who wish to enquire into the context of Sartres work.

A valuable source of feedback on my work on Sartre comes from teaching, for nearly a decade now, upper-year undergraduate and postgraduate students, who make up the kind of audience to which the present book is primarily addressed. It is not uncommon for students who are acquainted with Sartre through textbook paraphrases of some of his most popular claims, to experience serious puzzlement when they turn to the original texts expecting to see a fixed set of existentialist slogans popping up on every page. What they find instead is a philosopher working in meticulous detail on some fundamental problems in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of value, meaning, mind and action. Moreover, the Sartrean approach to practical issues is hard to justify or, even, to interpret correctly, if it is not seen from within the Sartrean perspective of reality in general. I have accordingly focused on certain themes whose discussion might help introduce the reader to the Sartrean way of thinking about reality. The themes of intentionality, perception, emotion, imagination, being, existence and essence are also topics of concern to contemporary philosophical enquiry. I have thus tried to articulate how the Sartrean approach may advance our understanding of the current debates surrounding those issues. My reasoning, to be sure, is not that these are the only issues worth exploring in Sartres voluminous output; it is rather that an exploration of several other topics presupposes or, at least, can most securely proceed on the back of a good grasp of the issues addressed in the present work.

One of the nice things about completing a manuscript is the opportunity it affords the author to acknowledge the help he received, mostly in the form of incisive remarks from several colleagues. I am first of all grateful to audiences in London, Oxford, Paris and St Petersburg, where some of the ideas presented in the book had their first airing. I should also thank Chris Daly, Peter Goldie, Harry Lesser and David Liggins for commenting astutely on parts of the manuscript.

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